I do buy it. Maybe I'm just an optimist. If we make it a priority, and put some money and political will behind it, we can make it happen. More than any other country, Americans have the ability to make it happen when we decide that it needs to happen.
In 1962, JFK said this:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
In 1969, Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon. That was in
less than 7 years, and they had to invent everything from scratch.
Unlike NASA in the 1960s, we've already invented wind farms, turbines, and CNG burning vehicles. If it takes 20 years to build a bunch of fuel stations for CNG, then that's because there's no profit in it. Think how quickly Compuserve, AOL and Prodigy built nationwide networks of dial-up centers back in the mid-90s. If there is money to be made, American ingenuity will kick into high gear. Nobody is as creative as we are at solving problems to make money. Nobody.
If T Boone Pickens is involved in it, there is money to be made. He's no fool. I don't buy him as an altruist -- he's a capitalist.
In summary, God bless America, and may we tell all the idiots in the world to keep their damn oil.
Man, I should run for office. Or be a preacher. Hallelujah, and pass the pale ale.
)
